Google Paying $1 Million To Anyone Who Can Hack Google Chrome Browser

Can you imagine being paid to do something illegal out of the ordinary? That’s exactly what Google wants hackers to do. Google is interested in finding out about its security flaws in its Google Chrome browser, so they are willing to pay $1 million to anyone who can expose flaws in the browser.

$20,000 – “Consolation reward, Flash / Windows / other”: Chrome / Win7 local OS user account persistence that does not use bugs in Chrome. For example, bugs in one or more of Flash, Windows or a driver. These exploits are not specific to Chrome and will be a threat to users of any web browser. Although not specifically Chrome’s issue, we’ve decided to offer consolation prizes because these findings still help us toward our mission of making the entire web safer.

Google also stated that each winner would also receive a Chromebook and that there can be multiple winners in each category up to the $1 million limit.

BUSINESS TAKEAWAY

This is an interesting strategy that many business owners are afraid to undertake. Oftentimes, business owners are afraid of exposing their product to competitors or they are unwilling to part with significant sums of money to learn about their products shortcomings. We think this is smart move on Google’s part for quality control and brand loyalty.

What do you think of Google’s contest for hackers? Would more businesses benefit from learning about flaws in their products? Leave us a comment on our Google+ wall and let us know what you think. As always, please feel free to share this with friends.